March 24, 2009

Topics of skeptical, iconoclastic, and experimental thinking

I was thinking of using this blog for posting on a wide range of fringe topics, things I'm skeptical about, "skeptical" in the true sense of "looking, don't know yet," and iconoclastic ideas, and positions taken as experiments in thinking outside the box, and so on.

It turns out the net of blogs is divided up into a lot of little interest groups in which individuals may have their own favorite one or two radical or unconventional opinions, but tend to use any other unconventional or unorthodox opinion as a byword for crazy, wrong, evil, stupid belief, as the word "geocentrism" is often used. The title of this blog "Return of the Sasquatch" puts readers on notice that if they think that way, they might not get it, and I sort of intended that. This is not for people who mock everything they don't understand, and think anything treated as funny is therefore not true. (That reminds me of Jim Bohannon as a guest host on the Larry King radio show in the '80s, who mocked the fringe topics that Larry King and his regular late night callers liked to talk about, by using a smarmy tone of voice in reading fringe news, something like saying, "Here's some news of the odd and stupid," and associating those as equal.)

It's alright to laugh with a topic that might be true. Only falsehood fears joking around. The truth is not afraid of questions or smart alecks.

I could go on preambling for a while, so without further ado:

topics of radical skepticism or unorthodox opinion

AIDS/HIV - People don't seem to take this seriously, but tens of thousands of people are being killed by toxic treatments, for a disease that doesn't really exist. I'm wondering as I write this: Am I supposed to go along with some tacit conspiracy that homosexuals, IV drug users, and Africans deserve to die anyway, so it's not worth sticking your neck out to question medical orthodoxy on this point where it's obviously at least half wrong? http://hivskeptic.wordpress.com/ This is so serious, it's something that should be covered more by blogs that aren't fringe than ones that are, because maybe association with the fringe makes it look less credible, but every fringe topic suffers that problem of apparent falsity by association, and this is not the blog for following the rules of that orthodoxy perpetuating system.

9/11 - What's so hard to believe about a conspiracy to cause plane crashes? Are we supposed to think it was just an accident that there were apparently two collisions of planes with skyscrapers in New York city, on the same day? So everyone agrees it's a conspiracy, right? Then the FBI quickly releases a list of suspects who supposedly flew the planes into the buildings kamikaze style. Most of those suspects were still alive and interviewed elsewhere. Why was that list never corrected? That's the power of orthodoxy and mockery of conspiracy theories. Anyone at the FBI or other law enforcement or news agencies who questioned and tried to get corrections would have been derided as a conspiracy theorist, going off the deep end, putting careers in jeopardy. Then gradually the news media built up an idea that those suspects were associated with the allegedly existing terrorist organization "Al Qaeda" (meaning "the list" in Arabic, as in the list of CIA contacts in Soviet occupied Afghanistan [correction: "the base" see footnote 1]) allegedly led by an allegedly alive "Osama bin Laden" (someone who spoke against US military presence in Saudi Arabia and was exiled by his Saudi oil family) who allegedly at first disclaimed connection with the attacks then allegedly belatedly claimed credit for the attacks in a video allegedly of him. Supposedly this blaming of Muslim terrorists led to American acceptance of wars of aggression against Afghanistan (obviously planned beforehand, since it began soon after 9/11) and Iraq (obviously already brewing for a decade during which Iraq was unconscionably punishment-bombed.)

Election fraud - Then supposedly despite all this provoked anger in the American populace, we freely chose to democratically elect "Barack Hussein Obama" (Barry Sotero, born in Kenya according to his relatives and raised as a Muslim in Indonesia) president, without any disruption of "the process"?! That's one of the biggest "conspiracy theories" going, in the sense of "theories of history that don't make any sense." They've been stuffing the ballot boxes so long, and now using computers to do it, and pushing the public's opinions with "push polls" using leading questions, and feeding us news that's propaganda for their system, that they, the political operatives and polling companies and foundations that run this operation, can't remember how to make a plausible show of public opinion leading to election results.

Electric universe - see http://www.thunderbolts.info/home.htm This is so much more tame and scientific and serious than other fringe subjects. The only thing that makes it fringe is that conventional astronomy tends to be like a religion with people. Religion is often about "the heavens" which originally simply meant "the skies." Once people start talking reverently about "the Big Bang" and "black holes" and such things, it pretty much takes a Reformation to change orthodox opinion. In fact, it never changes. Scientific revolutions happen because the old generation dies out. The new sciences don't even use the names of the old ones. Astronomers or cosmologists will be arguing far in the future about the intricate details of their imaginary cosmology and its inventive theorists, just like astrologers are still going strong, and a lot of other religions that began as descriptions of celestial events.

Fresh fruit diet - Some call the optimal natural diet "raw vegan" but that term sounds a bit dated and frankly oxymoronic to me, and some raw vegans eat correspondingly weird food as that title sounds, instead of mostly fresh fruit. For cutting edge discussions of fresh fruit and natural diets, see 30 Bananas a Day! and Living and Raw Foods.

I'm a bit tired now. That's just a sampling. It's not necessarily what I would write about those topics; it's just bringing them up. Oh yeah, one more I always wanted to see covered on the Nets:

Nuclear weapons - So there are these weapons that supposedly use a totally new source of energy, one that's never been harnessed for everyday purposes, and scientists don't know if it ever will be. These are weapons no one has ever seen with their own eyes, because they would blind you, and besides there's an international treaty against using them above ground. These weapons are bombs that supposedly can be thousands of times more powerful than the bombs used against civilians in Japan that were equivalent to some number of tons of TNT that could have been used instead. Do you believe in them, just based on hearing that? From politicians, who you know are lying when their lips move? Because there's a movie clip from the '50s of some explosion that supposedly was one? The science of it is secret, top secret for obvious reasons. Do you really think they tell the public the truth about things like that?

Thanks for tip. I corrected the article with more info about Al Qaeda.

Here's an explanation of why the article is not necessarily reliable information:

The article was meant to be off the top of my head casual writing of my thoughts on some things, and I happened to point that out. Quoting myself, "It's not necessarily what I would write about those topics; it's just bringing them up."

Also, most of the article isn't supported with references or a report from direct experience. Relying on information that's not sourced and not first-hand reports is a bad habit that people should be taught to resist more often.

That's a principle of real skepticism. I don't know why you call yourself a skeptic or if you're aware what the word means, but I like what I've seen of your blog so far.